Jomny Sun

The wonderfully original author of “Everyone's a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too” gives us a collection of touching and hilarious personal essays, stories, poems—accompanied by his trademark illustrations—covering topics such as mental health, happiness, and what it means to belong.

Jonny Sun is back with a collection of essays and other writings in his unique, funny, and heartfelt style. The pieces range from long meditations on topics like loneliness and being an outsider, to short humor pieces, conversations, and memorable one-liners.

Jonny's honest writings about his struggles with feeling productive, as well as his difficulties with anxiety and depression will connect deeply with his fans as well as anyone attempting to create in our chaotic world.

It also features a recipe for scrambled eggs that might make you cry.

Essays, Reflections, and Illustrations

Goodbye, Again

thought-provoking at times but not a book i necessarily need in this period of my life. However, I can relate to the feelings of anxiety expressed by the author and how interconnected the world is, so these are and would be key learning moments for readers. Wasn't suitable for me, this book, is all. 

Angela 

Isabella 

I enjoyed reading this book. It has a nice collection of various topics such as mental health and relationships. It's a book full of entries about vulnerability and thoughts, and I actually resonated to most of them. It's heart warming, but not really something I would read again because it does get repetitive.

easy read about difficult thoughts, reminds me to not think too much about work, and how big everything else is

Ianna Chia

Jun Angelo Cabuguas

oh my god this book this book (prayer plant, the last 15 minutes on earth, and the chapter about eggs are all highlights for me)

Bern de Belen

This was a beautiful book on little thoughts about life that become big thoughts when you write about them. About anxiety and how it can really make you spiral. About the fear of happiness leaving again. About how we are never the same person writing and the person reading what we wrote. About time capsules and making homes and leaving homes. About the familiarity of places when we give them enough time. About productivity addiction. About family. About love. About dumpling restaurants. About sitting in restaurants. 

What a wonderful magical read.

Sophie Wang

ymmv with the different metaphors and stories, personally missed the mark often for me and felt preachy without real conviction behind it

Jonny Sun

mica

it's like jonny sun took so many of our racing thoughts, slowed them down to 0.5x speed, and wrote them down into these short essays (which my attention span appreciates btw).

also as someone who does not have a green thumb, i thoroughly enjoyed the plant-based metaphors!

Deyana

I followed Jonny Sun on Twitter years and years ago. Reading this book felt like hearing my own thoughts echo. I would argue it's a sad book, but a comforting kind of sad. Or perhaps sad isn't the right word, and "wistful" would suit it better. This is a lovely collection of short essays and reflections about healing, dealing with burnout, and--forgive me for using this term--"adulting." I'm sure I'll be revisiting this one many times throughout my life.

Francis Buggey

loved this. my favorite essays are: “on staying with friends”, “how to cook scrambled eggs”, and “visiting happiness”

Charlee Boone

this book was gifted to me by a friend and I really had to push through. in the afterword the author mentions being able to utilize any stray thought in this book and it definitely comes across that way. I'm not big on essays and this felt like essays meets poetry with illustrations thrown in.

Some pieces on anxiety and loneliness did feel very relatable. would recommend this for neurodivergent, children of immigrants, or rain cloud personalities. I think they would resonate a lot more.

Jen Estrella

Ugh this book. I have never felt so seen and so validated, until I read this book. Everything he wrote (on friendship, nostalgia, belonging, productivity, social anxiety etc.) resonated with me. Thank you, Jonny Sun. This book is going to be my comfort read for sure, especially during moments when I feel like that person who thinks and feels too much.

Also, you made me love my Peperomia and my other plants even more <3

My favourite essay is probably "Removing." Here's a quote:
  The selfish part of all this is that I want to be important—I want to be so important that the world here falls apart, stops functioning, after I step out of it. And of course this doesn’t happen. But there’s a part of me that tells myself that if I were important, if I were truly important, my leaving would have had an impact. It would have done something. There would have been a hole that I left behind that people would notice. Instead, everything just keeps going on without me. And it feels like the lesson is, you don’t matter. But of course any act of leaving creates that hole. Every act of moving is also an act of removing, leaving an empty space where what moved is no longer there. It’s just, the problem with leaving is that you’re never able to stick around to see what you’ve left behind.”

Sara Bean Duncan

I read this book on a fall afternoon with my cat snoring on my feet. This book left me with the same Sunday afternoon feeling. Jonny’s prose felt like a meditation on anxiety, accepting life’s seasons, and allowing sadness (and happiness!).

Goodbye, Again Essays, Reflections, and Illustrations

Reviews